Hillary Clinton's Grassroots Campaign?
Very early in the 2016 presidential race, Hillary Clinton is taking a relatively unusual approach for someone who is the current polling leader in the Democratic primary race. She's eschewing extensive media exposure and is, instead, focusing on small meetings with a variety of constituents. Starting in Iowa, she's working on presenting herself as a one-on-one candidate.
No doubt this will not continue for very long, but it's an interesting way for her to get started. No huge campaign rallies or TV talk show appearances. Just sitting down with folks and sharing ideas. The media's covering this, because they have to, really, and her little gatherings are making the major network news programming. Cable news? Well, not so much, but the three major evening news programs still capture far more viewers than all of the cable news programming combined. Lots of people forget that, it seems.
So, is this her strategy? Will she continue this grassroots-looking campaign? I don't know. Today, she named an adviser with strong links in the Hispanic community, where she will no doubt do pretty well. She's polling well in the black community already, and we can expect her to make appearances to that audience as well.
Of course, Bernie Sanders, currently her only declared opponent, is going full-on grassroots in his bid. That may be how he campaigns throughout, unless he can raise more money that he has so far. Others will be joining the primary race soon, too.
So, how long can Hillary Clinton continue to approach this on such a small scale? I'm not sure, but it's an interesting start. It lets her avoid the big issues for now, and cast herself as the small business, middle class candidate. She'll have to address the big issues, of course, but she can probably extend this low-key campaigning for some time.
Looks like she has learned something from 2008. We'll see how far that goes.
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Plus total number of donations and average donation amount.....
